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Evolving demands for pedestrian data are the highest ever, with OpenStreetMap being a natural space where organizations and individuals can collaborate to create the most detailed maps covering the broadest range of requirements. OpenStreetMap US launched the Pedestrian Working Group to coordinate efforts for mapping pedestrian features. Welcome!
# Next Meeting May 21 2024 3pm EST
# Meeting April 16, 2024 3pm EST
### Attendees (please sign in) - name, any affiliation
1. Maggie Cawley, OSM US
2. Daniel Solow, mapper in Queens NY interested in better pedestrian routing
3. Jacob Hall, MapRVA
4. David Thompson - A regular guy from Connecticut who cares about public spaces [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dthompson/)
5. Chad Blevins, Meta/YouthMappers (Virginia)
6. Daniel Dufour, City of Chattanooga
7. Gregory Titievsky
8. [Gregory Power](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorywpower/); Cary, NC
9. Harrison Devine - OSM US Board Member - Brooklyn, NY
10. James Stassinos - Citian - Washington, D.C
11. Quincy Morgan, OSM US
12. Cyrus Chimento, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Washington, DC
13. Katherine Rudzki - GIS Analyst in Raleigh, NC
14. Kieran Farr, [3DStreet.org](https://3DStreet.org), SF, CA
15. Amy / Lumikeiju - Seattle, WA - Individual Contributor
16. Ariel Kadouri - NYC Mapper
17. Elizabeth Sall, [UrbanLabs LLC](https://urbanlabs.io/) - Live in Seattle; Originally from Cary, NC! :wave:
18. Cole Anderson, TCAT, Seattle
### Agenda
1. Welcome and introductions
2. Review of March meeting
3. Survey Results (Chad)
- Tags/Schema and Editing Guidance are key to data governance in OSM
- Can data be visible in screen readers
- What are the gaps in between data creation and data use, and how can we help fill in those gaps? (Jacob)
- How do we make the data more useful and useable to everyday people? Publicize data creation and use. (Clifford)
- Accessmap (https://www.accessmap.app/), can we identify areas/cities where data is useable for certian types of use? Can we build a tool to gauge data quality
- What is the current guidance that mappers are using to map sidewalks? What are people using right now? What are the differences?
- develop a tiered system for routability and useability of data
- How do you represent pedestrian paths in a way that is useful to users? e.g., where the sidewalk ends, or degrades, or there is an obstacle
- Accessibility: what comprises ADA compliance? (PROWAG) what tags feed into determinations of ADA compliance? What level of detail is available from imagery?
5. Discussion
6. Around the rooms & announcements
7. Recap and next steps
### Notes (please help co-create)
Link to sign up for OSM US Slack - slack.openstreetmap.us
Other links shared:
https://github.com/dotbts/BPA/tree/main?tab=readme-ov-file#national-collaboration-on-bicycle-pedestrian-and-accessibility-infrastructure-data
https://www.accessmap.app/
might be good inspiration for a mapping playbook https://contrapunctus.codeberg.page/blog/mapping-party-tips.html
https://hackmd.io/legG6QzVREKTsiTSxUS2zA?view#Schema
https://tasks.openstreetmap.us/projects/555
State of the Map US - so many ped talks! and a BoF
future idea - demo ped mapping tools
Survey results presentation:
- 21 responses
- diversity of expertise in the working group!
- participation is also diverse - nice to have varied interests/skills
- What Folks Hope to Get Out of the Working Group:
- Further work on standards and automatic data ingestion
- Improving workflow (tools, editing, supplementary data)
- Taggin/schema and editing guidance
- Have opportunities for training on schema/tagging
- ADA Compliance is important for many users and is a federal requirement.
- Priorities
1. Editing Guidance
2. Tags/Schema
3. Tool Improvement
4. Data Generation
5. Data Governance
6. Other
- Are you interested in a formal role within the Pedestrian Working Group?
- 11 yes
- 8 no
#### Desired outcome of the group - many!
Screen reader accessible? Schema
use the use cases to help drive working group activities and priorities
Metric to measure when an area is ready for certain types of use
what are people doing now? what's the guidance? and then who is the end user of that workflow?
- [Highway Wiki Page](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features#Highway)
- [Sidewalks Wiki Page](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Sidewalks)
- [OpenSidewalks Schema](https://tcat.cs.washington.edu/opensidewalks/)
#### Schema
What are the basic user stories we can use to "work backwards"?
Who are the users?
- the jay walker / creator of desire paths
- walk anywhere pedestrian
- sidewalk user that follows the infrastructure (curb cuts, crossings)
- Ada compliant sidewalks - ramps
- what are the edgecases?
- Motivations for the journey: Practical Journey, Exercise, Mental Wellness, Social
What are the different situations in the environment?
- no sidewalks at all
- pot holes, hindrances (roots, broken sidewalks, holes)
- [ADA compliance](https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/design-standards/) - but limited to small area
- Environmental stress: high traffic/no shade, vs benches and green space
Around the Rooms
- playbook? https://contrapunctus.codeberg.page/blog/mapping-party-tips.html
- https://openstreetmap.us/events/state-of-the-map-us/ lots of ped talks
- Based on the above Users and Environment contexts, what are the "jobs to be done" by the Users (ie what do they want to accomplish)? This can help provide a few complete sentences describing user, context, job-to-be-done, that can then serve as "test cases" against schema work proposed by Committee going forward.
- Some potential exercises to find the "jobs to be done" is to consider use cases that cannot be currently satisfied by existing schema, interview target users or put yourself in their shoes to imagine what their most common requests may be, etc.
# Meeting March 5, 2024
### Attendees
1. Maggie Cawley, OSM US, Virginia USA
2. Chad Blevins, Meta, Virginia USA
3. Jacob Hall, AidData - [MapRVA](https://maprva.org), Virginia USA
4. Sam Yasen - Taskar Center, Seattle, WA USA
5. Olivia Quesada - Taskar Center, Seattle, Washington USA
6. Tony Hull - Civilstreet, Minneapolis, MN USA
7. Will I - Texas, USA
8. Vivek Bansal - San Jose
9. Cole Anderson - Taskar Center, Seattle, Washington USA
10. Troy Saltiel, Sweet Streets - Salt Lake City, Utah USA
11. Daniel Solow - Queens, New York
12. James Stassinos - Citian - Washington, D.C
13. Tabb Sanford - Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency
14. [Chris Wichman](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswichman/) - [AirSage](https://airsage.com/) - Bergen County, NJ
15. Pooria Choobchian - University of Illinois Chicago, IL USA
16. Shriya Rangarajan - University of California, Davis, CA, USA
17. David Thompson - A regular guy from Connecticut who cares about public spaces [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dthompson/)
18. Aaron Villere - Denver Regional Council of Governments, Denver, CO USA
19. Cyrus Chimento - Bureau of Transportation Statistics
20. Jessica Moberly - Town of Leland, North Carolina
21. Amy O'Hara - Noblis (Washington, DC aream)
22. Clifford Snow - Mount Vernon, WA
24. Greg Titievsky - Chicago (ex-Mapbox)
25. Dante Volpe - Staten Island, NY
26. Meead Saberi (footpath.ai)
27. Ariel Kadouri - NYC mapper
28. Korawich Kavee - PhD student Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, US
29. Drew Dara-Abrams - [Interline Technologies](https://www.interline.io/), SF Bay Area
30. Jessica Breen - American University, Washington, DC
31. Ian Hollander - SE Michigian
32. Harrison Devine - OSM US Board Member and avid sidewalk mapper - Brooklyn, NY
33. Kaveh Farokhi - University of Maryland, College Park
34. Brian Fulfrost - Washington Dept. of Transportation (Active Transportation Division)
35. Ali Mohammadi - K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Iran
36. Minh Nguyễn – Open Source San José and OpenHistoricalMap – San Jose, CA
37. Edgar Lemus – COMUNITAR.IO – Washington, D.C.
38. Amy / Lumikeiju - Seattle, WA
39. Roland Hansson [DCR Design](https://dcrdesign.net/), CA
40. Polly Okunieff, GO Systems -- Boston, MA
41. Arnold Nkwabong - OSMF Volunteer - Yaounde, Cameroon
42. [Kieran Farr](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kfarr/) - [3DStreet](https://www.3dstreet.org/)
43. Kunal Mehta, Taskar Center
44. Will Ward - Nashville, TN
45. Anas Almassrahy - Senior Planner - City of Sugar Land, TX - Sugar Land, TX
46. Jon Woyame, Etch Ltd -- Columbus, OH
### Agenda
1. Welcome and introductions (Maggie) (move to break out rooms if more than 25 people)
* Your Name, affiliation, why you joined today
* OSM US Code of Conduct
2. Overview of Working Group (Chad)
* Goals and objectives - ask people in signup to ask what they would like to see the WG achieve - if WG is successful what will be accomplished in 1 year.
* Activities
* [Link to presentation](https://www.canva.com/design/DAF9jcoFKb4/2hH5vScdLaeZgz4utao4Wg/view?utm_content=DAF9jcoFKb4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=editor)
3. Around the room - build ideas
4. Recap and next steps
* poll for topics to focus on?
* 1 or 2 more co-chairs?
### Notes (please help co-create)
#### Reasons people are here:
- On accessibility - how to assess accessibility
- mapping sidewalks and other pedestrian features
- make more good data available
- how to apply tech to help with issues
- to bring taskar to the table / represent access map
#### Things we can work on - Discussion
- Project Coordination
- Feature Geometry
- how to connect street crossings with sidewalks? complex intersection geometries
- cater to routing-specific needs, for example by using footway=link
- Tools & Tech
- Guidelines that are embedded into editing tools
- Tools to validate connectivity and navigability of sidewalk networks
- consider the level of mapper
- presets vs nuances
- More automation around adding curbs
- Remember that established conventions do exist
- Curbs - adding curbs makes data more useable
- Baseline Schema
- that allows for gradual 'ramping up' of mapping level
-
- Editor preset checks to improve data quality and reduce errors
- See rapid's introduction of crosswalk way + node tag syncing as an example
- Resources for editing projects
- templates / ideas for new sidewalk mapping projects (in tasking manager, for example)
- Who are we mapping for - identify the need
- Consider various needs. As in don't map accessible yes or no, but map with detailed attributes; kerb=raised/lowered, tactile_paving+ and other details.
- How are people mapping - armchair or on the ground?
- Schema should offer ability to differentiate and work with walkability in terms of small streets without sidewalks vs large streets with sidewalks, etc.
#### Example User Stories
- As a user with limited mobility I wish to have extremely accurate (10cm precision) routing information to navigate from point A to B (where A and B are less than 1,000 meters and in an urban area with a metro population of greater than 1M)
- As a local resident I wish to advocate for the modification my streetscape (such as sidewalk and curb geometry) via city agency and must accurately describe using a standard-compliant method the proposed changes and geographical localization.
- As a DOT employee I wish to run a query to generate a report on the number of streets with x pedestrian traffic (generated from third-party transportation demand modeling software) that have a sidewalk of less than y width or no sidewalk at all in order to allow me to see where is the highest priority cooridors to build new or extended sidewalks
- As an elected official I would like to identify key infrastructure that is "missing" to complete a "network" of connected pedestrian or wheeled mobility paths (with no discontinuities) in an area centered around long/lat with radius x meters
- As a person with limited mobility, I want to quickly learn what destinations are reachable from a location, so I can decide on where to live based on accessibilty of local amenities
- As a researcher I would like to do advanced geospatial analysis on sidewalk networks in conjunction with other data, such as vegetation data to understand which regions have shadier sidewalks.
- As a local resident, I would like to be able to use pedestrian routing tools in order to more accurately estimate the length of my trip.
- As a local resident, I'd like to be notified when new bike-reachable destinations become accessible through the off-street (physically separated) infrastructure network
- As a third-party mapping company, I want to be able to allow users to customize their preferences/abilities so I can provide routes that are comfortably navigable. (E.g., a manual wheelchair user is routed up a nearby street that is not as steep.)
#### Existing Projects/Initiatives
- [FGDC Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Accessibility Infrastructure Data](https://github.com/dotbts/BPA?tab=readme-ov-file#national-collaboration-on-bicycle-pedestrian-and-accessibility-infrastructure-data)
- Taskar Center at University of Washington
- [Open Sidewalks Schema](https://github.com/OpenSidewalks/OpenSidewalks-Schema)
- [Tasking Manager](https://tasks.opensidewalks.com/)
- [accessmap.app](https://www.accessmap.app)
- https://wheelmap.org/
- Fitness/hiking navigation apps - Strava, RideWithGPS, OnTheGoMap
#### Comments
- To add some context for what some are bringing up in terms of sidewalk accessibility - it's been raised that there is a difference between someone doing aerial mapping and saying wheelchair=yes and actually knowing on the ground that the sidewalk segment is ADA compliant (which is a very specific list of requirements)
- There exists a larger fundamental issue with pedestrian facilities in that they are assets in the public right-of-way that are not uniformly owned or provided by common agency. Unlike streets, transit and most bicycle facilities sidewalks lack a consistent source for data integrity, updating and maintenance. How can this group or effort help establish clear standards for pedestrian asset inventory that can be taken up by transport agencies (through policy)? Or is this even possible? Think about ADA Transition plans, Crash data reporting, snow removal, capital programs etc.
- Wealth of data avalaible from cities that could be imported
- tooling could be improved to make it easier - ecosystem of folks working on it
- Not designed for routing, so importing can create unhelpful data
- often in polygon format but not great for routing/wayfinding. Process is a bit messy
-
#### Links shared during the meeting
Prior art links:
1) https://www.mdpi.com/ijgi/ijgi-09-00603/article_deploy/html/images/ijgi-09-00603-g001.png
2) https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/9/10/603
3) https://github.com/d-wasserman/shared-row
4) https://docs.streetmix.net/contributing/code/reference/segments
5) A novel method for measuring Walkability: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856423003166
To join the OSM US Slack: slack.openstreetmap.us & ask Maggie or another member to be added to the private working group channel